Excerpt: The genuine purpose and objective of this work is to develop a clear-cut distinction between (1) individuals and organizations, and between (2) individual and organizational knowledge, learning, and memory. individuals and organizations lend themselves to theoretical scrutiny as two ontologically distinct entities despite being one perceptual phenomenon in practice. the distinction yields insights into knowledge, learning, and memory of both individuals and organizations as if the positions and movements that constitute a dance are observed devoid of the dancer, and vice versa. it provides the initial backdrop against which old and new questions in management science and organization theory are put, for example, “what is the effect of organizational structure on the knowledge of organizations?”, “how does personnel turnover and layoff affect organizational learning?”, and “under which conditions are communities of practice beneficial to organizational memory?”

Excerpt: I bridge the gap between theoretical contemplation and empirical research with a model and simulation of autopoietic organizational knowledge, learning, and memory. “Like voltage, current, and resistance, the terms knowledge, learning, and memory must be defined in terms of each other” (Spender, 1996, p. 75). Together, then, these terms characterize the fundamental dialectic between structures and dynamics of organizations. The model draws heavily on social systems theory, thereby complementing autopoietic organization theory. The simulation stands in the tradition of mathematical approaches to organizational structures and dynamics such as Cohen, March, and Olsen’s (1972) Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, March’s (1991) Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning, Carley’s (1992) Organizational Learning and Personnel Turnover, to name but a few. While the model is first and foremost a mathematical conceptualization of the theory at hand, the simulation is a scientific inquiry “halfway between theory and experiment” (Waldrop, 1992, p. 63), a blend of deduction and induction. It is not an end in itself, however, but a means of manipulating the structures and dynamics of organizations in order to observe corresponding organizational behaviors. Therefore, the simulation findings allow for conclusions which are not necessarily evident from the theory and model alone. In closing, I discuss some of the findings in terms of future theoretical contemplation and empirical research.

Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology. Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian constructivist evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of the foundational questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is knowledge? How are life and knowledge related? Method: The approach is synthetic and multidisciplinary. A theory of knowledge-based living systems is developed from first principles regarding the behavior of dynamical systems over time to combine the concepts of autopoiesis (after Maturana, not Luhmann), and knowledge (after Popper). Results: Autopoiesis and the construction of knowledge are inseparable aspects of physical phenomena scalable to many levels of organized complexity (e.g., cells, multicellular organisms, organizations, social systems, etc.). The result unifies theories of epistemology, physical dynamics, life, biological evolution, knowledge and social systems. Implications: The results highlight the importance of understanding autopoiesis as first defined by Maturana and Varela as a complex physical phenomenon persisting over time. Autopoietic “self-observation” is not paradoxical. As dynamic physical processes, any internal/external activities relating to “observations” are displaced in time. The worlds that living systems act on are not those observed. “Circularly closed” systems are actually open spirals along the axis of time. Relevance: The paper provides a framework for a unified theory of living systems based on autopoiesis and an evolutionary constructivist theory of knowledge. It provides a strong theoretical basis for a radical constructivism that remains connected to an external reality.

To survive and flourish in a changing and unpredictable world, organizations and people must maintain strategic power over necessary resources – often in the face of competition. Knowledge contributes to that strategic power. Without vigilance to maintain its currency and accuracy, the value of knowledge depreciates as circumstances change over time. Karl Popper’s evolutionary epistemology and Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis provide a paradigmatic framework for considering the roles and importance of time in constructing knowledge and using it to maintain strategic power. Following Popper, knowledge of the world is constructed, used and evaluated via cyclically-iterated processes. We introduce nine time-based frames of reference based in this Popperian autopoietic paradigm to explore the relationships between time and a utility-based valuation of knowledge as it is constructed and applied. We believe this framework and associated paradigmatically consistent vocabulary provide useful tools for analyzing organizational knowledge management needs. Relevance: The paper explores individual and social cognitive processes used to construct and maintain reliable knowledge about the world, based on a unification of autopoietic theory and Popperian evolutionary epistemology. The scalability of the unification across several levels of organized complexity is explored. Luhmann’s (mis-)usage of the concept of autopoiesis is criticized. Analyzing the growth of knowledge (i.e., the capacity to apply cybernetic controls to maintain autopoietic survival and growth against physical perturbations) along the time-axis of an evolving universe simplifies many of the complexities of second-order cybernetics.

Key words: evolutionary epistemology, knowledge management, time, organization theory, autopoiesis, OODA loop, strategic knowledge

This article reviews the potential of Niklas Luhmann’s autopoiesis as a contribution to organization theory. We consider organization theory to consist of three epistemological foundations, which we label equilibrium-based theory, process-based theory and recursivity-based theory. We review critically Luhmann’s autopoietic theory in relation to each of these three foundations. We suggest that whereas it deviates radically from equilibrium-based theory and deviates significantly from process-based theory, it holds potential in its complementarity with Giddens’s structuration theory in providing a promising basis for recursivity-based organization theory.

Key words: Organization theory, autopoiesis, systems theory, Luhmann

The Gaia hypothesis states that the Earth is an instance of life. However, appraisals of it tend to focus on the claim that life is a feedback self-regulator that controls Earth’s chemistry and climate dynamics, yet, self-regulation by feedbacks is not a definitive characteristic of living systems. Here, we consider the characterization of biological systems as autopoietic systems (causally organized to self-produce through metabolic efficient closure) and then ask whether the Gaia hypothesis is a tractable question from this standpoint. A proof-of-concept based on Chemical Organization Theory (COT) and the Zero Deficiency Theorem (ZDT) applied on a simple but representative Earth’s molecular reaction network supports the thesis of Gaia as an autopoietic system. We identify the formation of self-producing organizations within the reaction network, corresponding to recognizable scenarios of Earth’s history. These results provide further opportunities to discuss how the instantiation of autopoiesis at the planetary scale could manifests central features of biological phenomenon, such as autonomy and anticipation, and what this implies for the further development of the Gaia theory, Earth’s climate modelling and geoengineering.

Key words: gaia hypothesis, earth’s climate system, living systems, autopoiesis, self-production by metabolic closure, chemical organization theory, zero deficiency theorem, autonomy and anticipation.

Autopoietic theory, a theory of complex, nonlinear, autonomous and especially living systems, found its way from biology, through the social sciences to organization theory and information systems. It enjoys major attention from scientific audience in lots of different disciplines. Still there hasn’t been enough effort to establish a common foundation for a new theory. There are often contradictions in the very essence of the theory which are outlined in this article. By using a more simplistic conceptualization of autopoiesis, we are trying to give guidelines for a new foundation in this area.

Key words: Autopoiesis, information, living systems, social systems, organizational systems, information systems

Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems has been widely influential in the German-speaking countries in the past few decades. However, despite its significance, particularly for organization studies, it is only very recently that Luhmann’s work has attracted attention on the international stage as well. This Special Issue is in response to that. In this introductory paper, we provide a systematic overview of Luhmann’s theory. Reading his work as a theory about distinction generating and processing systems, we especially highlight the following aspects: (i) Organizations are processes that come into being by permanently constructing and reconstructing themselves by means of using distinctions, which mark what is part of their realm and what not. (ii) Such an organizational process belongs to a social sphere sui generis possessing its own logic, which cannot be traced back to human actors or subjects. (iii) Organizations are a specific kind of social process characterized by a specific kind of distinction: decision, which makes up what is specifically organizational about organizations as social phenomena. We conclude by introducing the papers in this Special Issue.

Key words: autopoiesis, decision, distinction, luhmann, organization theory, theory of social systems.

Excerpt: The theory of self-organization is beginning to penetrate into the entire spectrum of scientific disciplines. The initial ideas that led to self-organization theory can be traced back into the historical tradition of the social and natural sciences. The theory of self-organization in a narrower sense, however, is usually said to have begun with the works of Manfred Eigen, Heinz von Foerster, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Hermann Haken, Humberto Maturana and Ilja Prigogine. If one considers these works as the basis, two main conceptual points of reciprocal causal relationship may be distinguished: the emphasis on the purely theoretical, system-related aspect and the emphasis on the epistemological aspect of self-organization. The latter emphasis is necessarily made when the idea of an autonomous creation of order is applied to the area of cognition. Every experienced or reconstructed reality, according to this view, is considered to be the result of a self-referential attribution of meaning and thus constructed in a radical sense. This epistemological consequence reacts upon all approaches of the theory of self-organization in a theoretical recourse. In the following this general epistemological consequence will not be our main focus of interest. Instead, we would like to outline the special significance the idea of autonomous order formation may have for the concrete psychological investigation of the functioning of cognitive systems. Arguing first that self-organization theory is a possible answer to a basic problem of psychology and second that this theoretical approach has a long, well-elaborated but nevertheless nearly forgotten tradition in gestalt psychology, we will point out some methodological consequences of the self-organization concept for psychological experimentation. In the last part of our contribution some already performed experiments will be demonstrated to illustrate the theoretical conclusions.

While the phenomena of reaching a goal is generally represented in the framework of optimization, the phenomena of becoming of a goal is more similar to a “self-organization and emergent” rather than an “optimization and preexisting” process. In this article we provide a modeling framework for the former alternative by representing goals as emergent autopoietic structures. In order to conceptually situate our approach, we first review some of the most remarkable attempts to formally define emergence, and identify that in most cases such definitions rely on a preexisting system to be observed prior and post emergence, being thus inadequate for a formalization of emergent goals corresponding to the becoming of a systems as such (e.g. emergence of life). Next, we review how an implementation of the reaction networks framework, known as Chemical Organization Theory (COT), can be applied to formalize autopoietic structures, providing a basis to operationalize goals as an emergent process. We next revisit the definitions of emergence under the light of our approach, and demonstrate that recent taxonomies developed to classify different forms of emergence can be naturally deduced from recent work aimed to explain the kinds of changes of the organizational structure of a reaction network.

Key words: chemical organization theory, emergence, goals, autopoiesis, process modelling.